Understanding Eschatology

We are in the Last Days when prophetic events are happening, and where prophetic events begin to happen, confusion automatically results. People were ask about the war in Iraq and what is happening in the Middle East and how to understand it biblically in light of biblical prophecy.

If we just watch the news we can get really confused as to what is going on, but when we look at these things in the light of the Bible, things become very clear.As we see prophecy beginning to be fulfilled, and it is being fulfilled faster and faster, confusion emerges. We are in the Last Days; God did put these things in His Word for a reason, and the reason is He wants us to understand these things.“Seventy weeks have been decreed for your people and your holy city…(That is Jerusalem.)…to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy place. So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah…(…”an anointed one”…)…the Prince there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be built again, with plaza and moat, even in times of distress. Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. And its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined. And he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering; and on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate, even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate.” (Dan 9:24-27)We have two princes in this passage. In verse 26 we obviously see the Messiah—Jesus, but there are people who teach (usually extreme Calvinists) that Jesus is also the second prince. Now the second prince is Antichrist. They are confusing Christ with the Antichrist. Let us begin at the beginning.

Understanding Eschatology

There are four ways to understand eschatology, four ways to understand Last Days prophecy in Western theological thought:

Preterism says these things already happened and have no future meaning, that they already happened in the Early Church or whatever and they have no future meaning. Revelation has no future meaning in this view at it has all happened already. This is the eschatology of the Kingdom-Now people who say there will be no Antichrist, no falling away, no Rapture, that the Church will go from strength to strength, and Satan is bound. (If Satan is bound I want to know who keeps letting him go.) Additionally they say that the church is going to conquer the whole world for Christ before He comes. Now it is not logical to believe such nonsense, but there is not much logic in the people who preach such nonsense. This is Preterism.

There are two forms of Preterists. First are the liberals, the unsaved so-called theologians. What they say is, “Well, Isaiah could not have known a king named Cyrus would come along 200 years later and send the Jews back to Israel from the Captivity in Isaiah 44-45, so therefore Isaiah could not have written the book of Isaiah. It had to be somebody they call “Deutero-Isaiah” who came along after the fact and took something that already happened and made it look like a prediction called an “ex vatacina interpolation.” Their presupposition is, “We cannot be sure there is a God, if there is He does not know the future, and even if He did He would not tell Isaiah, so therefore Isaiah and Daniel could not have been so accurate in what was predicted. Somebody had to come along hundreds of years later and make believe.” That is what the liberals say.
Then we have Historicism. There are people who say they are born again, who are Evangelicals, who believe in a form of Preterism, and these are the ones who say that Matthew 24 and the book of Revelation were fulfilled in 70 A.D.

Historicism is what some of the Reformers believed. They would say, “Well, there are many antichrists; we should not look for these two people in the book of Revelation, that is simply literary illustration. The papacy is an ongoing institution – it is an antichrist institution; so every Pope is the Antichrist.” You go to Northern Ireland, the Presbyterians believe this. They go so far as to say “the restrainer” in 2 Thessalonians 2:7 who restrains Antichrist from coming was pagan Rome and when the Visigoths conquered pagan Rome in the 5th Century, then the papacy came to power. That is how far they take it. The restrainer is the Holy Spirit, but they actually say it was imperial pagan Rome. This is Historicism.

Then there is Poemicism. Poemicism says, “Well, the book of Revelation is only poetry. It is given only to encourage the Church that Jesus will come back one day. It is given to encourage us at times of persecution. We should not take it as having any specific meaning, it is like poetry. It is just to cheer us up when things are tough.” Lutherans go with this. Luther basically rejected the book of Revelation and so Lutherans are stuck with the fact that the founder of their church did not like it. So what are they going to do with it? Well, it is poetry to them.

Then there is Futurism. Futurists are people like the late Barry Smith, my friend, and Hal Lindsay and these people say that there will be an Antichrist, there will be a mark of the beast, there will be a falling away.

We have to have discernment when talking about Eschatology withstanding the apostasy in the contemporary church that The Word of God warns would precede the return of Jesus. With the Conviction that ……